Key Takeaways
- On Wednesday, Sept. 17, the Senate Banking Committee hosted a roundtable to discuss its draft crypto market structure bill.
- Crypto executives in attendance included Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson.
- Hoskinson was also in Washington for a roundtable discussing the U.S. strategic bitcoin reserve on Tuesday.
As U.S. lawmakers advance talks on potential crypto legislation, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson attended a Senate Banking Committee roundtable on Wednesday, Sept. 17. Commenting on the event, Hoskinson expressed his hope that a bipartisan market structure bill will pass this year.
Industry hopes are also running high for legislative action on President Trump’s plan to form a strategic Bitcoin reserve, which drew its own a roster of high-profile crypto executives to Washington this week.
Progress on Crypto Market Structure Bill
With the GENIUS Act now passed into law, U.S. lawmakers have now turned their attention to the second pillar of Congress’s push for crypto regulation: a bill defining the market structure for digital assets.
In July, the House passed the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act (the Clarity Act), setting the stage for its consideration in the upper chamber.
Some House Republicans remain hopeful the bill will pass relatively unchanged.
However, facing Democratic opposition to the Clarity Act, Senate Republicans have drafted their own market structure bill that is more likely to receive bipartisan support.
At the beginning of September, the Senate Banking Committee circulated a draft bill that builds on the Clarity Act’s basic framework, while attending to critics’ objections.
For example, one excerpt shared online appears to address widespread concerns that rules designed for crypto exchanges could be extended to open-source software tools.
In August, crypto firms including Coinbase, Uniswap and Paxos told the Committee they couldn’t support any market structure bill without explicit protections for software developers.
Defining Commodities and Securities
Other aspects of the House bill that the Senate is poised to amend include a provision to delineate digital assets as securities or commodities according to some kind of decentralization test.
In contrast, the Senate bill is expected to codify the securities/commodities distinction along the lines established by Ripple vs. SEC. Under this framework, initial fundraising via token sales will be overseen by the Securities and Exchange Commission. However, tokens will be treated as commodities when traded on the secondary market.
Hoskinson Weighs In
Following his attendance at Wednesday’s roundtable, Hoskinson praised contributions from Ripple and a16Z.
There is “more work to do, but great progress is being made on bipartisan legislation being passed this year,” he stated.
The Cardano founder’s participation is noteworthy as ADA is currently caught in exactly the kind of regulatory uncertainty the market structure bill intends to resolve.
With thousands of staking pools and a broad tokenholder base, Cardano likely passes the Clarity Act’s “mature blockchain system” test, firmly establishing ADA as a digital commodity.
Meanwhile, under the Senate’s alternative proposal, ADA’s commodity status may be dependent on continued disclosures from key entities like IOHK, the Cardano Foundation, and Emurgo.
As such, Hoskinson has a special interest in the exact form disclosure requirements take, as they could influence ADA’s legal status.
Strategic Bitcoin Reserve
Besides the draft market structure bill, another piece of crypto legislation has galvanized Senators recently.
On Tuesday, crypto industry power brokers convened in Washington to discuss President Trump’s plan to establish a strategic bitcoin reserve.
Trump’s proposal would require Congressional action, and the industry’s preferred vehicle is Senator Cynthia Lummis’s BITCOIN Act, which was introduced in March.
A roundtable discussing the bill was reportedly attended by Hoskinson, Strategy Chairman Michael Saylor, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, and top executives from major banks, Bitcoin mining companies, and investment managers.
James Morales is CCN’s blockchain and crypto policy reporter. He has been working in the news media since 2020, writing about topics such as payments, banking and financial technology. These days, he likes to explore the latest blockchain innovations and the evolving landscape of global crypto regulation.
With an educational background in social anthropology and media studies, James uses his platform as a journalist to explore how new technologies work, why they matter and how they might shape our future.
